This blog will post detailed news items about GLBT issues. Some of the issues include the "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and gay marriage. Please note that my main website is DOASKDOTELL.COM (link on my Profile).

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About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Monday, May 19, 2014

Should homophobic speech be "tolerated"? That question can lead to a curious moral paradox (like a gambit in chess)

The Care2 website has an interesting perspective by Steve
Williams, “Why we don’t have to tolerate anti-LGBT intolerance, linkhere. I found it on Facebook and tweeted it
myself. I also got an email link to a piece in Chronicle Review by Suzanna Danuta Walters, "An Incomplete Rainbow", linkhere.

It’s true, that in the US and most modern western countries,
public homophobic speech is becoming almost as unacceptable as racism, and a
Donald Sterling-type event can happen. Various performers and sports figures
have been forced to apologize or threatened with loss of business for insensitive
remarks. One reason right now that this is so sensitive is that rabid anti-gay
measures, both in terms of laws and vigilantism, are occurring in much of the
Third World and, most unfortunately and shamefully, in Russia. In practically all countries that have passed
laws like this, other major instability or aggression has occurred in other
areas, as in Nigeria and Russia. There
is definitely a connection. The Pew
Research Center has noted that homosexuality is becoming a proxy for a new
divide between western and more collectivized (and usually authoritarian)
cultures. And it could soon create an
asylum and refugee crisis that can challenge individuals in the west to pitch
in and provide “radical hospitality” and support (this is an evolving
possibility; we saw it with the Cuban refugees in 1980).

There is, however, a certain authoritarianism within some of
the “gay establishment”. And it covers a
particular irony. This concerns loyalty
to the idea that sexual orientation is immutable. It is true, it is like no other issue:
controversial for reasons people can’t explain, and yet so invisible. It seems like a plug-in, independent variable
(or a “linearly independent component of a vector space”), that can occur
randomly in any combination with any other personality and cognition-related
traits.

Immutability would not be a relevant observation about
something that can lead someone to harm others.
A biological inclination for alcoholism (and probably a lot of drug
absue) is probably genetic and immutable, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need
to be treated. But that’s partly because
when people are intoxicated, they harm others (particularly when driving). I’m personally lucky in that regard. I didn’t inherit any particular
susceptibility to alcohol and drugs, or to obesity or diabetes. So sometimes I’m not real empathetic.

Yet, we often hear anti-gay speakers going out of the way to
insist that homosexuality is chosen. I
remember someone telling me that over dinner in Dallas in 1983, between games
of a chess doubleheader in a club-sponsored match. (We had drawn the first game. I had “come out” during dinner. In the second game, after dinner, he got an
early advantage and then blundered, probably from distraction, and allowed me
to checkmate him quickly with a knight sacrifice.)

Why is this such a big deal?
I think that male homosexuals, when open, used to make a lot of male
heterosexuals aware of their own shortcomings and that they can fail
physically. We seem to them like the
referees as to who is the fittest to have a long lineage. And for some people, with limited opportunity
in an increasingly individualistic culture, that’s all they have. (It's relevant that I am an only child, so I stopped my parents from having an indefinite biological legacy.) I think that what is going on overseas has a
lot to do with this. There’s an
accompanying irony, body fascism (or lookism) that is certainly common in the
male gay community. It’s a curious
reflection of values, originating in smaller, often tribal cultures that really
needed most or all men to look and act like “men” to protect the clan. So the freedom to “be oneself” and follow one’s
own sexual values, can invoke the freedom to hold personal attitudes about
others that are still prejudicial, and to refuse to relate to others when
perhaps openness is needed. It is indeed
a moral paradox.

So the moral logic would be, if it is part of nature, it doesn't affect how others (straight men) see themselves in their own relationships. If it is a choice, it comes across as a way to step on other people's toes intentionally, and make them feel less secure. One time, back in the early 1970s, a coworker, whom I always beat at chess, had gained a lot of weight suddenly after getting married. He said, "I don't notice men's bods. I notice girls' bodies." (He said, girls, not women.) You can see where he was coming from.

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